Watch ESA Director General annual press briefing 2023
Friday, 20 January 2023 13:49
Join our start-of-the-year press briefing looking ahead at 2023, with ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and ESA Directors. They’ll present the next steps of Agenda 2025, looking at new missions, science, space safety and commercialisation of space.
Tune in to #ESAwebTV on 23 January, from 08:00 GMT/09:00 CET, to watch live.
More on ESA’s Vision and Agenda25.
Mapping the Moon
Friday, 20 January 2023 13:11
A paper published in December 2022 has analysed the rocky features of the lunar South Pole and identifies possible areas of interest for astronauts to explore and gather the best samples on the Artemis III mission.
ESA seeks global adoption of “zero debris” policy
Friday, 20 January 2023 12:16
The head of the European Space agency says he hopes to have a “zero debris” policy for European spacecraft in place in the next few years, an approach he says he would like to see expanded globally.
Galileo tribute unveiled as Juice says ‘Farewell, Europe’
Friday, 20 January 2023 12:00
A commemorative plaque celebrating Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s moons has been unveiled on ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice. The spacecraft has just completed its final tests before departing Toulouse, France, for Europe’s Spaceport to count down to an April launch.
Britain's Tim Peake steps down from ESA astronaut corps
Friday, 20 January 2023 11:45
Britain's Tim Peake has hung up his spacesuit, stepping down from Europe's astronaut corps to become an ambassador for space activities, the European Space Agency said on Friday.
Peake, who became the first British astronaut to visit the International Space Station in 2015, said it had been an "incredibly exciting and rewarding" 13 years.
"Being an ESA astronaut has been the most extraordinary experience," Peake, 50, said in a statement.
"By assuming the role of an ambassador for human spaceflight, I shall continue to support ESA and the UK Space Agency, with a focus on educational outreach, and I look forward to the many exciting opportunities ahead."
The ESA said that Peake had been on an unpaid leave of absence since October 2019, and had retired from active astronaut duties from the start of this year.
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Visitor to a galaxy Visibility of stars in the night sky declines faster than previously thought
Friday, 20 January 2023 05:24
People around the world are seeing fewer and fewer stars in the night sky. The change in star visibility can be explained by an increase in the sky brightness of 7-10 percent per year. The rate of change is faster than satellite measurements of artificial light emissions on Earth would at first suggest.
This is the finding of a study published in the journal Science, conducted by a researc NASA issues award for greener, more fuel-efficient airliner of future
Friday, 20 January 2023 05:24
NASA announced Wednesday it has issued an award to The Boeing Company for the agency's Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, which seeks to inform a potential new generation of green single-aisle airliners.
Under a Funded Space Act Agreement, Boeing will work with NASA to build, test, and fly a full-scale demonstrator aircraft and validate technologies aimed at lowering emissions. HawkEye 360 to monitor GPS interference in support of the US Space Force
Friday, 20 January 2023 05:24
HawkEye 360 Inc., the world's leading commercial provider of space-based radio frequency (RF) data and analytics, announced that Slingshot Aerospace awarded the RF data provider a contract to provide data for Slingshot's space-based monitoring and detection of RF threats and to support Slingshot's proliferated Low Earth Orbit (pLEO) Data Exploitation and Enhanced Processing (DEEP) program for th Can you trust your quantum simulator
Friday, 20 January 2023 05:24
At the scale of individual atoms, physics gets weird. Researchers are working to reveal, harness, and control these strange quantum effects using quantum analog simulators - laboratory experiments that involve super-cooling tens to hundreds of atoms and probing them with finely tuned lasers and magnets.
Scientists hope that any new understanding gained from quantum simulators will provide Satellites can be used to detect waste sites on Earth
Friday, 20 January 2023 05:24
A new computational system uses satellite data to identify sites on land where people dispose of waste, providing a new tool to monitor waste and revealing sites that may leak plastic into waterways. Caleb Kruse of Earthrise Media in Berkeley, California, Dr. Fabien Laurier from the Minderoo Foundation in Washington DC, and colleagues present this method in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on Ja Falcon 9 launches sixth GPS 3 satellite
Friday, 20 January 2023 05:24
The sixth Global Positioning System III (GPS III) satellite designed and built by Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) has been launched and is propelling to its operational orbit approximately 12,550 miles above Earth, where it will contribute to the ongoing modernization of the U.S. Space Force's GPS constellation.
GPS III Space Vehicle 06 (GPS III SV06) launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force S Space station activities move ahead amid Soyuz shuffle
Friday, 20 January 2023 03:08
It is largely business as usual on the International Space Station as NASA adapts its current activities and future plans to Russia’s decision to replace a damaged Soyuz spacecraft docked there.
Stars disappear before our eyes, citizen scientists report
Friday, 20 January 2023 03:03
A startling analysis from Globe at Night - a citizen science program run by NSF's NOIRLab - concludes that stars are disappearing from human sight at an astonishing rate. The study finds that, to human eyes, artificial lighting has dulled the night sky more rapidly than indicated by satellite measurements. The study published in the journal Science showcases the unique contributions that citizen